Jon

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Jon.


The Black Jacobin...
Rate this book
Clear rating

 
Loading...
David Foster Wallace
“True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.”
David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

Hélder Câmara
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
Dom Helder Camara, Dom Helder Camara: Essential Writings

David Foster Wallace
“Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.”
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

Thomas Pynchon
“Like so many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts--census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway.”
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

David Foster Wallace
“How can even the idea of rebellion against corporate culture stay meaningful when Chrysler Inc. advertises trucks by invoking “The Dodge Rebellion”? How is one to be bona fide iconoclast when Burger King sells onion rings with “Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules”? How can an Image-Fiction writer hope to make people more critical of televisual culture by parodying television as a self-serving commercial enterprise when Pepsi and Subaru and FedEx parodies of self-serving commercials are already doing big business? It’s almost a history lesson: I’m starting to see just why turn-of-the-century Americans’ biggest fear was of anarchist and anarchy. For if anarchy actually wins, if rulelessness become the rule, then protest and change become not just impossible but incoherent. It’d be like casting a ballot for Stalin: you are voting for an end to all voting.”
David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

year in books
Mike Zi...
1,050 books | 348 friends

Kristop...
395 books | 68 friends

James Liou
106 books | 227 friends

Chad Every
407 books | 155 friends

Rachel
1,038 books | 84 friends

Marcy B...
675 books | 142 friends

Angela ...
51 books | 557 friends

Gwen An...
43 books | 125 friends

More friends…
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Best Books of the 20th Century
7,899 books — 49,786 voters



Polls voted on by Jon

Lists liked by Jon